Market Mayhem, Tariffs & Recession Talk (Uncut) 03-08-2025

Rise Up Special Report: Market Mayhem, Tariffs & Recession Talk

And I’ll say one other thing on this. And I have had a couple of clients call a little squeeze about the market from 2001, from January one of 2001 to now. So now we’re really going back and I’m dating myself, okay.

The markets have obviously done extremely well. If you miss 10 days of that market run up, you miss 54% of the return. So again, people need to resist that temptation, it’s hard.

You see, you think you see something happening, this terror thing, or whether it was COVID and your natural reactions, I’m gonna get out of the way of this. And then when the storm is over, I’m gonna come back in. The problem is when people are comfortable and come back in, they’ve missed three of those 10 days, okay.

And if that happens three times during your investment lifetime, if you will, you’ve missed it. Welcome to a very special edition of Rise Up on Wealthion. I’m Terry Kullsen and I’m happy to be with you here today as your co-host.

And for the last several weeks, we’ve been highlighting the volatility in the market. And this week, it really reached a high for the year. Today, we’re gonna continue to deep dive into what’s going on in the market, lots of questions, things going on about tariffs, policies, and then the US economy.

There’s just been a lot going on. So today we’re gonna try to spend some time, digging in the markets, understanding what’s going on, but most importantly, how do we help you grow and protect your portfolio, even in the midst of all this volatility? I know there’s a lot of talk about potentially stagflation, even a recession. We’re here to help answer some of those questions and hopefully help calm some of the waters.

As you can see, my co-host Joe Duran is not with us today. It happens to be my birthday today, but Joe actually went to Florida. So isn’t he a great guy to spend that time relaxing and enjoying Florida on my birthday? I feel so grateful.

But anyways, we wish him well, but we do have two great people with us here today. Scott Schwartz, he again is the principal at Bleakleaf Financial Group. Scott has been with us many times and really has a wonderful way of helping calm his clients.

And then we also have a special guest coming back, David Mendelbaum, who’s the portfolio manager at Bleakleaf Financial. His specialization is healthcare. And we’re gonna talk a little bit about what’s going on with healthcare this year.

It’s actually one of the potential areas that we can actually see some growth and protection for your portfolio. So Scott and David, thank you for being here today. Thanks for having me.

Happy birthday. Oh, thank you. It’s been a great week so far.

And once I’m done here, one of my favorite things to do is go out and do orange theory. Have you guys ever done orange theory before? On your birthday? That sounds terrible. I know, it’s a strange thing, but it’s one of my favorite things to do.

My husband’s going with me. So anyways, as we get through this, I’ll be going out to increase my heart rate, which I know there’s a lot of heart rate going on, heartbreak, heart rate going on in the market today. And we’re continuing to see this volatility.

US stocks tanked to session lows on Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell over 400 points, down another 1%, while the S&P 500 nearly 2%. The NASDAQ plummeted more than 2.8%. The NASDAQ is now off more than 10% from the December record high.

So we’re hearing all this correction and what’s going on. Scott, let’s start with you for a market reaction, especially on the tariffs. President Trump is really moving forward.

He expects some pain from Americans, but he’s trying to reassure us that there’s some calm out there. So would love to hear your thoughts on the volatility and what’s happening. Yeah, so speaking directly to the tariff question, I don’t think anybody out there is crazy about the idea of tariffs.

Someone’s gonna have to pay these taxes. The argument is, will the Chinese or the Europeans or the Mexicans or the Canadians pick up the slack? Will they be passed directly on to consumers and will that have a negative impact? And there’s also this notion that maybe they will be short-term. And Trump is known for being a pretty good negotiator.

He’s tried this before. There was a lot of fear about tariffs, specifically in 2016 when they did this, and it turned out to be okay. The way I look at this kind of thing, Terry, whether we’re talking about tariffs, whether we’re talking about geopolitical strife, whether we’re talking about rapid interest rate movements, I’ve been doing this for 40 years now.

It’s kind of hard to believe it’s true. There’s always a story. There’s always a reaction.

I look at the markets this morning and this afternoon like everybody else. It gives me a little bit of a tummy ache. I’m not gonna lie.

But the reality is that these are the times when you’ve got to be patient. These are the times you’ve got to believe in your plan. And I’ve seen this.

This is probably, if this actually becomes something, it hasn’t yet. Look, when you’re giving back what you’ve made in the last six weeks, that’s not exactly a market crash. So again, I think we need to check our perspective first and foremost.

But I also think that the MAG-7 that has led this market for the last few years has gotten expensive. It’s drugged the market up with it. If you look at where the carnage has been here very recently, it’s been in those kind of tech names.

I can tell you these are the days where you want to be in a diversified portfolio. And politically, we’re always there. And the time to prepare for things like this is not when it’s happening, it’s before.

So I can tell you that our portfolios on the year are still slightly positive. Value stocks have held up fine. David’s healthcare fund, believe it or not, through yesterday was up about 8%.

The bond portfolio is rallying because rates have come down a little bit. So for people out there who aren’t crowded in and weren’t chasing that magnificent seven trade, if you will, they’re doing fine. The people who did, unfortunately, they’re feeling a little bit of pain.

But I do think it’s time to be patient, take a breath. This stuff will work itself out. We’ll be talking about something else six or 10 months from now.

But if you’ve got a well-constructed portfolio, you’ve got good balance, you’ve got a good liquid position, it’s all gonna be okay. Yeah. Scott, it’s really great to hear that.

When we’re in the storm, we don’t even realize that there are really opportunities here. And the fact that Bleakley Financial Group still is positive on the year demonstrates the value of great financial advice. And really, one of the things I love what you said is really looking, make sure your portfolio is represented across all asset classes, right? Stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities, make sure you have that balance.

And then make sure you’re looking for quality investments, like the fundamentals, like you said, solid earnings and low debt. And really what makes a difference too is good management. Do they have good management? Can they see beyond these turbulent times that we’re experiencing now? So Scott, one of the things I was gonna get you for your birthday, I think, just hearing you talk, is that you wanna keep calm, right? A t-shirt that says, keep calm, continue on.

And if you have to drink wine or a smoothie or something, you know, you should do that. But keeping calm, I think is the key. So, you know, I know you work with a lot of clients and Bleakley is a fabulous firm, but, you know, what are your clients asking you about this week and what advice are you giving them? Our clients, believe it or not, Terry, are extremely calm.

I haven’t had a single call, a single incoming call from a client this week. In my normal course of reviews, which I do several a day, I’ve had conversations that people are asking, they’re a little nervous, what do you think? Again, the markets are very funny. In the last couple of years, we’ve had a non-US equity position because we want that balance, that non-correlation.

Our non-US equities on the year were up 7 or 8%, right? When tech stocks were up 20%, and value stocks were lagging in the last few years, you know, people didn’t wanna look at those stocks, but our value positions were holding up. David, as I said, has been a bolster. We have a global macro strategy at our firm that Peter Buchvar runs.

When the stock markets have 23, people look at Peter and he’s like, you know, I don’t wanna be there. Why do I wanna get an 8 or 9%? Why do I wanna be with a guy who owns value stocks that are boring and gold and silver and that boring stuff? Well, when the market’s down 10 and you’re up two or three, that’s pretty good, right? So again, we’ve been here before. If you’re non-correlated, I think I might’ve mentioned in a podcast we did a few weeks ago, Terry, that being diversified always means having to say you’re sorry, right? Because there’s always gonna be an asset class out there that’s doing better.

But diversified portfolios also save you in times like this. So if the market continues down to this level in a diversified portfolio, you’re not necessarily gonna be positive on the year, but you’re certainly not gonna get routed. There’s plenty of assets out there that haven’t run up dramatically, aren’t very overvalued.

So there’s still room out there in healthcare stocks and value stocks. Non-US equities have been very unloved for the last 10 years, and they’re rallying here relative to the S&P. So I would tell people, be patient, don’t panic.

And I’ll say one other thing on this, and I have had a couple of clients call a little squeeze about the market. From 2008 to now, or I’m sorry, from 2001, from January 1 of 2001 to now. So now we’re really going back and I’m dating myself.

The markets have obviously done extremely well. If you miss 10 days of that market run up, you miss 54% of the return. So again, people need to resist that temptation.

It’s hard. You think you see something happening, this terror thing, or whether it was COVID and your natural reactions, I’m gonna get out of the way of this. And then when the storm is over, I’m gonna come back in.

The problem is when people are comfortable and come back in, they’ve missed three of those 10 days. And if that happens three times during your investment lifetime, if you will, you’ve missed it. So you have to be patient, make sure that you’ve planned, hopefully in advance for this, things will be fine, things will recover.

There’s always gonna be some new story. Yeah, I love what you said about diversification means sometimes you have to say you’re sorry, and you may be sorry that you missed out on that one stock, right? But you’re not sorry that you missed out on that 10 days of which you lost 54% of your value. So like that is such a great story.

And I hope the viewers hear that and aren’t making any overreactions at this moment because it won’t necessarily end well. But David, you’re a portfolio manager as well. So interesting to you, what stands out for you and where are your concerns? Yeah, I mean, clearly volatility is at elevated levels.

It’s up, last I checked, 44% year to date. And I think it’s probably here to stay just given the confluence of the macro uncertainties, policy risks, which are heightened for the healthcare sector in particular. And we can talk about that.

But I think to the point that both of you made is the importance of being disciplined, staying the course for someone like me who invests with a deep fundamental research process behind it and constantly stress testing and doing due diligence on positions we’re in, subsectors we’re in, what’s happening in Washington is just stick to the process, be disciplined. And a mistake that is frequently made in periods like this is over-trading. And I would strongly, I’ve not been doing this as long as Scott, but been doing it a couple of decades.

And that’s always a recipe for disaster in periods of heightened volatility. Absolutely, let’s move on now to the economic data that we’ve had come out this past week. And it’s really shaking some confidence for investors.

Thursdays, we saw some shocking numbers coming from the outplacement firm, Challenger Gray and Christmas, who announced there were about 172,000 layoffs for February up 245% just from January and the highest monthly count of layoffs since July of 2020. So we have not seen this in several years, about 62,000 of those were attributed to DOGE federal government layoffs. And on top of that, ADP released its job data for February, noting that private companies added just 77,000 new workers, well below the 148,000 that were estimated to be added.

So this report also showed tariff concerns as a sector that lumps together trade, transportation, utility jobs, saw 33,000 positions go away. So this can get a little depressing at times. Scott, will you help us unpack this from the potential of any upside this could lead to for future Fed cuts or how people should respond? Yeah, I think that what’s going on in the government right now is gonna be painful, I think for some people, of course.

I think we all agree, whatever our political views are, whether the government’s gotten very bloated, I don’t think it’s healthy when the biggest employer in the country is a federal bureaucracy, they’re not particularly productive. So there’s gonna be some pain there. I think the severance packages, the way they’re structuring this, I think it’s not like there’s gonna be a lot of people on the street.

I don’t think it’s gonna affect things so much from sort of a consumer perspective. A lot of those people will be repurposed in the private sector. A little more concerning is some of the private sector layoffs you’re talking about.

But again, this is a cyclical world we live in. When there is uncertainty like this, when people are concerned about tariffs, they are a little less likely to maybe borrow some money or maybe to hire, they might be more inclined to lay people off, but it’s all about comps too. We’ve been in such a, we’ve been in an environment up until very recently where it’s been very hard to find labor.

Good people have been hard to come by. So that offers an opportunity too. The cycles will shift.

I can tell you obliquely we’re in a hiring spree. So if there are any really great people out there that have unfortunately been downsized, we’re looking for good people. And most of our clients are still looking for good people.

So again, it’s a cycle. I wouldn’t be too concerned about it if it persists. Obviously really high unemployment numbers are bad for people, bad for economies, but it doesn’t feel like, it’s such a small period of time.

We’re so focused now on short periods of time because there’s so much news out there. You can’t walk anywhere without walking by a TV. In the morning it’s market sell-off.

I mean, I see days where the tagline on MSNBC or CNBC is market sell-off, because the S&P 500 is down 75 basis points. For God’s sakes, it could be up 7% in the last three weeks. But again, this is the world we live in where everything is kind of hyperbolic.

The market could very well be up 150 basis points tomorrow. We’ve seen those days too in the last couple of weeks. So again, I just think people should take a breath.

We’ve been here before. The markets do go up and down. We’re gonna have it down here at some point.

As long as we’ve got enough liquidity, as long as we’re at selling stocks, I would argue that we’re not there yet, but we’re getting close to maybe an opportunity here to buy some stocks that are good companies that might be selling up a little bit cheaper, because some good stocks are, I think, being unfairly punished. I was gonna say that. One of the questions clients consistently ask is when should I rebalance, right? And this might be a time to rebalance.

If you look at your overall portfolio now and you’ve lost on a few, you might wanna buy to actually get that back up to what your risk tolerance is. So it’s not about buying on the curve or on the down, it’s about making sure that you’re rebalanced and you’re still set up at the risk tolerance that you want. I think that’s right.

And if you really look at the numbers, though, in a lot of areas of our portfolios, we’re just kind of back to where we started the year, right? So what we try to do is keep an eye on where we are. I’d like to see equities. I’d like to see equities come down about 5% below my target before I weighed in.

One mistake people make is a couple of bad days. They think it’s so terrible that I’m gonna go in here and I’m gonna rebalance and I’m gonna buy equities there. You’re better off being patient, right? You’re down a couple of 3%.

That’s not necessarily a huge buying opportunity. You’re kind of right where you wanna be. You know, 5%, that’s sort of our bandwidth with rebalancing.

If we’re off by about 5%, we’re gonna go in and do that. Maybe not a bad time. If you have a dollar cost average, you’ll accelerate a little bit.

But I think the best thing people can do is be patient. You own quality stuff, it’s gonna come back. It really will.

Yeah, just keep watching us every week and that’ll help you with your patience. It’ll help you calm down. And remember that time is your friend, right? If you’re in the equity market, you should be long-term.

And, you know, both of you are leaders in the industry. You’ve all worked in the industry a while, but you’ve been leaders. And, you know, I think about some of our viewers and I would guess many of them are worried if they potentially lose their jobs.

And David, you know, could you think of things that you might think about or start doing if people are afraid of losing their jobs, what should they be doing to protect themselves financially? Yeah, I mean, raising cash and having more liquidity is certainly a logical approach to protecting against that risk. You know, in terms of equity exposure, I agree with what Scott said 100%. One thing, just to put some numbers around some of this stuff is, you know, we could be in a period of where the broader equity markets could be challenged.

And that’s simply a function of the fact that we’ve gotten so top-heavy with the Magnificent Seven. I mean, entering the year, I think we talked about this when I was on last, comprised one third of the S&P 500. Now that’s been a function largely of the fact that those seven stocks have dramatically outperformed from an earnings growth perspective the rest of the market.

30 to 35% annual growth the last couple of years, the rest of the other 493 stocks, flat. But that’s expected to converge this year. Those Magnificent Seven still projected to put up robust growth, but decelerating to high teens, whereas the rest of the market should be double digit or so.

And healthcare is gonna accelerate even faster, mid-teens to high teens. Now, enormous divergence and dispersion, that’s where someone like me has to come in and identify the winners and reduce the risk for potential losers. But if this rotation continues and the Magnificent Seven is now down 16% from their December high, that’s gonna be a challenge for sort of passive index investing, but create opportunity for good active management as well.

Yeah, that’s right. And, you know, I was thinking about a lot of our viewers and, you know, what could they do to keep their job, right? I mean, that’s really, what do you need to do to make sure that you maintain your job? And believe it or not, I did a little research on this, nothing to do financially, but Corn Fairy actually put out a number of articles, Corn Fairy is a research firm, about one of the ways you could keep your jobs. And guess what one of them was? The art of praising your boss.

So if you wanna keep your job, make sure you praise your boss. And they gave specifics. So, you know, Scott and David, we might wanna think about this, but, you know.

I did wanna say Scott looks incredibly handsome today. Thank you for noticing. Well, you’re modeling that perfectly David, cause they said, be specific as much as you can and make sure that it’s quality of compliment versus quantity, cause bosses are smart enough.

And if you’re just brown nosing, they’ll get right into that. I’m good with that. Terry, you say that we just had a conversation, my brother and I as my partner yesterday, we were just talking about, you know, what’s happening out there.

Some people are losing their jobs sadly. A real easy thing, I think if you’re looking for a tip on that specifically, go back to the office, okay? The easiest person to fire is the person that you haven’t laid eyes on or laid hands on in a while. And you’ve got, you know, with the sort of change in our work environment the last few years since COVID, some companies have been very relaxed and, you know, allowing people to decide whether they wanna come back or maybe come back.

We want you back at least two days a week. And a lot of people have gotten very comfortable working from home. And so they’ve become resistant to that.

I would tell you that if my kids are working in a corporate environment or had a boss or any of my friends, my number one would be get back into the office, start, you know, rekindling and creating these relationships with people because I can tell you as an employer, it’s a lot easier to let somebody go who you haven’t seen in six months than somebody that you see every day. Personal relationships matter, right? Personal contact matters. And I would echo that because I have two young adult kids and I stress to them, be present, be available, say yes, be proactive, follow up, be respectful.

All the things that make you a valued employee, just double down on that stuff. That’s great advice, you guys. Probably even more effective than just praising your boss.

So thank you. But let’s move into, you know, David, I’d really like to think about you as really seeing the future. And you told us earlier this year that healthcare stocks actually are looking pretty positive when you were with us in early January.

You said, don’t sleep on them, but make sure that you understand what the opportunity is here. And as of Thursday, the healthcare sector is dramatically outperforming the S&P at more than a 6% return versus a negative 2% for the S&P. So David, let’s keep sharing the good news.

Sure, yeah. I mean, and I think that conditions are in place for that outperformance to persist, at least within certain areas, subsectors and companies, because I need to remind folks that healthcare is vast, but it’s also highly diverse, both in terms of industry, subsectors, but also within subsectors. But the conditions are in place for that outperformance to continue.

Clearly, what was weighing on the sector post the election was just this sense of enormous policy risks from whether it’s RFK, head of HHS, now it’s Doge. Medicaid is very likely to be a significant pay-for in the reconciliation package. So knowing how to minimize exposure to those particular risks while increasing exposure to, as you noted, very high quality companies, secular growth companies that are innovating, with smart management teams, I totally agree that’s critical, that know how to allocate capital, that execute and gain share within their industries.

And as these policy risks, some of them will persist, but as some of them abate, that will also fuel continued outperformance for a number of companies across the sector. Yeah, there is still bright spots out there. I think it’s so important for our viewers to hear that there are bright spots to make sure that you continue to grow your portfolio even during these times.

And Scott, I’d love to hear from you. Analysts have suggested that we’re seeing a rotation underway, people leaving the Mag 7 and going forward for value investing. You talked about this.

Other areas like financial services, basic goods, global markets are starting to rise. If we see the rate cuts, I mean, it’s definitely gonna help the financial services sector that are involved in lending. Are there any adjustments investors should be making in reaction to this rotation? Or how do we know if this is temporary or long-term? Again, our orientation has always been to be prepared.

So we focus on what are my liquidity needs? David said before, if I thought I was gonna lose my job, I wanna make sure that I’ve got liquidity. Well, the same holds true with my portfolio. If I think I might need money because I’m nearing retirement or I’ve got something coming up, my daughter’s getting married.

When I get a new client, I wanna make sure that I’m not investing any money in the equity market that they’re gonna need in the next five years. Because I know if I’ve got five years, I’m making money in equities. But to your question, there’s plenty of good places out there to get good yield.

And I think in times like this, that’s what people are looking for. Dividend and paying stocks, I think are gonna be a beneficiary here. We’re very interested in the private credit markets.

There’s some, you’ve gotta be extremely careful there because now you’re talking about non-publicly traded companies. So if you’re gonna have exposure to that, you’d better have a partner, a manager, if you will. And I’m not talking about us.

We have managers that we love, but they need to be somebody that really knows how to go in there and really examine a company and really understand what the risks are and what that company looks like. It’s almost like a private equity firm buying a company. You better really understand it.

But in those markets, yields now are probably in the nine, 10% range. And again, if you’ve got the right people looking over that and they’ve got the right positioning, you’re not taking a lot of risk, a little more than say buying a AAA publicly traded bond. So that I think is an asset that’s interesting.

Mid-cap stocks are probably likely to do better. We’re seeing non-US equities doing better because again, they were trading at almost half the PE ratio of these large cap companies. And to David’s point, I think we are going through maybe somewhat of a rotation, but when these stocks get so big, they move the markets for better or for worse.

And when they’re coming down, you are kind of fighting that headwind. But if your bonds are there to offset that drop and yields are good, and if rates do continue to come down a little bit, that’s gonna be a creative to your bonds. Our bond portfolio is on the Europe about two and a half and two and a half percent in a couple of months, only because rates have come down.

When rates come down, the value of your high quality bonds goes up. So I’m still optimistic. I think we’re gonna see people investing in different parts of the market.

I think it’s healthy. I’d much rather see an S&P 500 where there are 250 stocks participating in the upside rather than seven or eight. That always made me nervous.

There was a year, last year or the year before, where if you took those seven or eight stocks out, the market was completely flat. That’s not good. So I think that while it’s nerve wracking, a little scary, if we don’t panic, we haven’t lost anything.

It’s like a game. We look at our portfolio balance, it’s down. As long as I haven’t sold anything, I haven’t lost anything, this will pass.

But I think this is a good time for people. It’s a good stress test, gut check. Am I really as diversified as I thought it was? If you’ve got a portfolio right now that’s down 4% or 5%, 6%, 7% on the year, you’re clearly not.

If you’ve got a good, well-diversified portfolio, you’re not down much here, not yet. There’s too much positivity out there to outweigh some of these negative stocks. So I think that’s probably a good thing to check in with your advisor on if you have one.

Yeah, I mean, some of the economic data, there’s some conversation around stagflation and recessions. You know, the renowned economics professor, Steve Hanke, was on Wealthion this week saying that he believes we will see a recession in 2025. And Jeffrey Solomon, the president of TD Cohen, is also warning clients that this might be a downturn on the horizon into recession.

So Scott, you’ve seen this in the markets before. I know I have. There’s been some blips and scares and we’ve always recovered.

But how do you help clients during this downturn? And what are some of the telltale signs that investors could be worried? Well, I think people are getting worried. If this continues for a while, people will get worried, right, I mean, volatility scares people. Recession’s a funny thing, right? I mean, people like to make fun of economists.

They’re all smarter than me, so I don’t make fun of them. But a lot of people throw that word around. And I would tell you that a recession doesn’t necessarily mean the market tanks either, right? All we’re talking about is a specific slowdown in GDP, right? So just because there’s not growth in a fairly narrow period of time, that doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world.

So he might be right, he might be wrong. I do think that there’s opportunity out there still. I do think that if our clients are positioned correctly, they’ve got enough liquidity to get through this, there’s gonna be an opportunity to buy some stocks cheaper.

If I’ve got a five or 10-year time horizon, I’m always gonna win if I own quality securities. So, you know, again, it’s taken me a long time, Terry, to insulate myself emotionally and take that out of it so that I can be a good advisor to my clients and focus on what really matters. And what really doesn’t matter is what happened today, right? You know, what happened today, quite frankly, is more people were selling than buying.

And very well, there might be more people buying tomorrow. There’s always a lot of headlines, a lot of people will explain to us what happened. Sometimes they’ll give us an explanation for this down market today.

They might’ve given us a similar explanation to why it was up three weeks ago. You know, sometimes good news is bad news and bad news is good news, but in the end, it’s all about positioning, it’s all about liquidity, it’s all about diversification, own quality stuff, be patient. I think if people would just bear that in mind, I think they’re gonna do a whole lot better.

Have a plan. Yeah, have a plan is absolutely true. I also think, you know, for viewers that may have not lived through a recession yet, we’ve been through several and we do recover.

I mean, the markets are a great testament to say, you know, we’ve been through this before, markets have hit highs as a result of it, but what goes up must come down at times and something we should consider. But David, if you were a 30, 40 year old investor right now and you’re looking at your portfolio, what should you be thinking about? Yeah, I mean, to Scott’s point, diversification, stick with a plan, be patient, maybe turn off CNBC and don’t get too activated by the volatility we’re seeing. And then the general news media, and to the extent people are on Twitter, that’s even worse, but is heightening these fears in many respects.

So turn that stuff off, but just be disciplined, stick with a plan, again, don’t try to trade out of it just because you’re reading somewhere that somebody made, you know, a hundred million dollars on Reddit trading. Just be disciplined, I think is the key. And to your point, time is your friend, so let returns compound.

And to Scott’s point, you’re gonna exit at the wrong time. So stick with stuff. And if you’re a stock investor like me, know what you own, have high conviction, make adjustments where necessary to avoid risks.

So for example, what we’ve done, we’ve sold stocks that have been very strong performers for us, the hospitals, because of their inordinate exposure to Medicaid or some companies that have high exposure to NIH funding, which is now somewhat in peril given the cuts and what’s going on in academic research, or that have tariff exposure. Not a lot of our companies have that, fortunately, but to the extent some do, make your adjustments if you have done the work and you think that’s a real risk and reallocate into areas, you said, value stocks, high dividend payers, strong growth companies that have inelastic demand that are not subject to economic cycles like others. So lots to do, but again, be disciplined and stay the course.

I love that. And then we have another week of numbers and data coming in. CPI is expected, PPI is expected.

Scott and David, are you expecting any more volatility next week or what should investors be thinking about next week? Personally, I think the elevated volatility is here to stay for a period of time, just because there’s just so much uncertainty. Investor sentiment has really, really taken a beating, but there’s uncertainty on the macro front. We’re getting a lot of mixed messaging.

I saw Lutnick tried to, they’re playing good cop, bad cop, but it’s creating just sort of a seesaw effect. Policy risks, we have the reconciliation package, which will need to get passed mid-year-ish or so, and that’s gonna create a lot of volatility given the uncertainties as to pay-fors, how’s the vote gonna go? So I think it’s gonna be here to stay, but again, try not to be too activated by it, I think would be the best advice. Yeah, I would agree with that.

And as David was talking, I was thinking, Peter Bukvar, who’s our CIO at Bleakly, and a dear friend of mine and David’s, he’s probably the smartest guy that I know in general. I can remember having a conversation with him around December, and he’s on TV quite a bit, and he’s on CNBC in the mornings typically, and Joe Kernan in particular likes to make fun of him, Dr. Doom and Gloom, he likes to refer to him as, because he’s got a very realistic perspective, he doesn’t get carried away either way. I can remember talking to him back in December, and I said, well, what are you thinking? Like I’ll typically ask, and he said to me very specifically, sentiments is too strong out there.

People are way too optimistic about markets when everybody out there is optimistic about the markets, and the sentiment is so positively strong. That’s when you start worrying a little bit. When everybody out there is really negative, and everybody out there is really worried, and people don’t want anything to do with the market, that’s when you want to start thinking about maybe dipping your toe in, and again, I don’t think we’ve seen enough downside to really create a huge opportunity one way or the other.

But the more negative people get, the more optimistic I think we should be from the perspective of having an opportunity. People have their eyes on an expensive pair of shoes, and it gets marked down 50%, and they bolt for the mall. The market trade is down by 15 or 20%, and everybody’s looking at their shoes, right? Literally looking down.

The markets are counterintuitive. It’s been like this forever. Unfortunately, human nature is what it is, so we can’t help ourselves.

We are the creatures that we are, but I think that there’s probably going to be an opportunity here. Very, very hard to get rattled by it. I mean, I don’t like looking at it, but we got a long way to go, I think, before people should start getting really worried here.

Yeah, we saw in 2024 the market exuberance, right, which is that the height of the market, you have all this consumer exuberance about the stock market, and then it does come down, and this is a regular cycle we see in the market until we get to some pessimism here, pessimistic behaviors. But as Scott said, that’s actually a sign that things can be getting better when we actually hit the bottom. So we don’t know when that is, but we do know it exists and it will come back.

And Scott and David, I just want to thank you so much for being with us today and sharing your perspective and your experience in markets like this. It is so valuable. For all of our viewers out there, we’d really like to know what you think about RiseUp.

We’re just getting started. We do want to hear from you. What topics should we cover regularly? What do you want to hear? What do you not want to hear? We’re really happy to answer any questions that you have.

And if our conversations really sparked a few questions from you, we’d like to invite you for a free portfolio review from one of our trusted RIAs like Scott and David at Bleakley Financial Group. Just go to Wealthion.com backslash free and click the link for the description. We look forward to seeing you here next week.

Happy birthday, Sherry. Thank you, guys.